Dr. Wittkopp's studies of evolution and development in Drosophila started during her undergraduate research with Dr. Greg Gibson at the University of Michigan (B.S. 1997), and continued during her doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin with Dr. Sean Carroll (Ph.D. 2002). From 2002-2005, Dr. Wittkopp studied the evolution of gene expression as a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. Andy Clark at Cornell University. Coming full circle, the Wittkopp lab was officially founded at U. Michigan in August 2005.

Jonathan earned his Ph.D. in December 2007 from the UC-Irvine, where he worked with Dr. Anthony Long on quantitative genetics in Drosophila. In his postdoctoral work, he is exploring fundamental characteristics of gene expression evolution and biology using the brewer's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This work is supported by a National Institutes of Health NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Joseph earned his Ph.D. at Kansas State University, working with Dr. Michael Herman on ecological genomics ofmicrobes and nematodes in August 2008. He began his postdoctoral work in September 2008 and has been using next-generation sequencing to investigate patterns of regulatory evolution among Drosophila species. This work is supported by a National Institutes of Health NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship.

After completing her Ph.D. research on the evolution of floral color patterning in monkeyflowers, with Dr. John Willis at Duke University, Arielle switched kingdoms to study the evolution of body color in Drosophila americana and D. novamexicana when she joined the Wittkopp lab in March 2009. She is using transgenic flies to identify specific nucleotide variants, in the tan gene that contribute to color differences. This work is supported by a National Institutes of Health NRSA Postdoctoral Fellowship. Visit her personal website.

Rich joined the lab in the summer of 2011 after completing his PhD at UC Berkeley, where he worked with Mike Eisen to dissect the spatial relationships between transcription factor binding sites in Drosophila enhancers and yeast promoters. In the Wittkopp lab he is exploring how genetic variation between closely related Drosophila species drives patterns of change in expression and transcription factor binding.

Gizem earned her B.S. in Molecular Biology and Genetics in 2005 from Bogazici University (Istanbul, Turkey). She also spent a summer studying evolution and development with Dr. Matthias Gerberding at the Max Planck Institute (Tuebingen, Germany). Gizem officially joined the Wittkopp lab in April 2006, with a primary focus on studying the effects of new mutations on gene expression in yeast. She is also creating transgenic Drosophila to study regulatory divergence in flies.

Lisa earned her B.A. in Biology from Case Western Reserve university in 2006 and joined the lab officially in April 2007. Lisa has diverse interests that range from the physiological effects of pigmentation to the developmental genetic control of pigmentation patterning. She is also concurrently pursuing a Master of Science (M.S.) Degree in Post-Secondary Science Education.

Dave earned his B.A. in genetics and molecular biology from Northwestern University. He then worked as a research technician with Dr. David Jacobs at UCLA, recovering and studying expression of sensory organ genes in basal metazoans (jellyfish and anemone), and subsequently earned a M.S. degree with Dr. Charles Taylor at UCLA examining biostatistical analyses of seasonal incidence of malaria and other infectious diseases in Mali. Dave officially joined the lab in April 2009 and is now collecting and analyzing mutations that affect the expression of a variety of genes in yeast.

Brian earned his B.S. in Genetics and Microbiology from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009. During that time he worked for Dr. Carol Lee on the ecology and evolutionary biology of the invasive copepod Eurytemora affinis. His current projects focus on determining the relationship between pleiotropy and fitness, and how pleiotropy can bias the set of mutations which are ultimately evolutionarily relevant. Brian is currently supported by a Rackham Merit Fellowship and the Genome Sciences Training Program.

Kraig earned his B.S. in statistics from Michigan State University in 2007. Afterwards, he joined Sebastian Zoellner's group at the University of Michigan Department of Biostatistics, where he studied leveraging population structure in sibling genotype data and CNV detection from microarray data. After receiving his M.S. in biostatistics in 2009, he entered the Bioinformatics Graduate Program as a PhD student. He officially joined the lab in January 2010 and is developing methods to classify regulatory divergence between closely related species of Drosophila using next-generation sequencing data.

Elizabeth received her M.S. in Biology from Winthrop University in May of 2010. As a graduate student, Elizabeth spent two years researching evolutionarily-conserved mechanisms in the heart of the sea squirt, Ciona intestinalis. New to this position as of September 2010, Elizabeth is currently assisting with various projects in the lab.

Wesley began working in the lab as a junior in September 2010. He is concentrating in Biology with a minor in Music, and plans to submit an honors thesis in 2012. He is currently finishing a project on cis/trans gene regulation throughout developmental time in D. americana and D. novamexicana, and is also contributing to a project looking at the geographic distribution of alleles of the genes tan and ebony, in D. americana across the United States. Wesley is currently applying to medical schools across the country.

Katya began working in the lab as a senior in May 2011 with Dr. Jonathan Gruber on mapping a collection of mutations in baker's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. She is an Anthropology Major and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Minor.

Mackenzie started working in the lab May 2011. She is currently working under the guidance of Gizem Kalay, helping to create transgenic Drosophila in order to study regulatory divergence in flies. Mackenzie is concentrating in Neuroscience, and has plans to pursue graduate school with an interest in Genetic Counseling.

Hussein began working in the lab as of May 2011. With a current post-doc in the lab, Hussein is working on understanding the spectrum of mutations affecting the TDH3 gene in yeast. By modeling the regulatory interactions of TDH3 as a directed graph, he hopes to provide further insight into how mutations affecting gene activity are distributed within a regulatory network. Hussein is a math major and hopes to complete a minor in computer science. He is currently applying to graduate school and plans to pursue his interest in analyzing evolutionary change at the molecular or population level.

Zhixiu visited the Wittkopp Lab the summer of 2010 from Tsinghua University, China. She worked with several lab members including post-doctoral fellow Dr. Arielle Cooley and EEB graduate student Brian Metzger on expression of Drosophila pigmentation genes.

Emma joined the lab as a freshman at UM in September 2005. She studies the genetic basis of pigmentation differences between D. americana and D. novamexicana using a combination of genetic, transgenic, and molecular genetic techniques. Although Emma transferred to Oakland University, she continued to work in the lab, serving a year as our Lab manager/Techincan. In Fall 2010, she began an accelerated graduate program in K-12 education at the University of Georgia.

Kevin received his B.S. in Public Health from Utah State University in May of 2008. As an undergraduate Kevin spent two years researching ion channel mutations and the role they may play in human disease. Although Kevin was a Masters student in the school of Public Health, he was able to utilize his molecular cloning background in the research being done in our lab.

Laura began working in the lab as a junior in January 2008. She is concentrating in both Biology and Math, and plans to submit an honors thesis in 2009, which will focus on the pupal development of D. americana and D. novamexicana. In Fall 2009, she began medical school at the University of Toledo.

Kara began working in the lab in October 2009. She worked closely with Jonathan Gruber to characterize a novel collection of regulatory mutations in yeast. In Fall 2010, she joined the Biology Ph.D. program at Michigan Technological University.

Ulises spent 3 months in the lab investigating Drosophila pigmentation evolution during 2009, funded by a Darwin Award from British Council. He adapted morphometric tools developed during his graduate training for studying pigmentation and characterized tan and ebony expression in D. novamexicana and D. americana. Upon leaving the lab, he began a postdoctoral position with Michael Purugganan at New York University.

Xiaowei joined the lab during her first year at the University of Michigan (Oct 2007). Her first project in the lab examined reproductive isolation between D. novamexicana and D. americana as well as within D. americana. She then contributed to the construction of various transgenes, and in Jan 2009 began studies for her Neurobiology Honors thesis which focuses on the role of the yellow gene in courtship behavior. In Fall 2010, she began medical school at Duke-NUS (Singapore).

Beth officially joined the lab in January 2007, although she spent much of December 2006 learning her way around the lab. She has contributed to a wide-variety of projects during her first year, becoming a "jack-of-all-trades". Her contributions include cytological tests for chromosomal inversions, the development of genotyping assays, a population survey of candidate gene sequences within D. americana, diverse cloning projects, and measuring desiccation resistance. In Sept 2008, Beth began the Ph.D. program in molecular biology at Duke University.

Yainna worked with us during the summer of 2008 as a visiting student from Universidad Metropolitana in Puerto Rico. She spent her time in the lab analyzing expression of the tan gene in D. americana and D. novamexicana using in situ hybridization. She gave an outstanding oral presentation on her work at the SROP symposium and presented a poster at the CIC SROP meeting at Michigan State University. Yainna was awarded the most outstanding student prize for the 2008 SROP group at U. Michigan.

Elliott earned his B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Tennessee in 2007, where worked research with Dr. Chris Boake studying the genetics of female sexual receptivity in Nasonia. Elliott began his graduate studies in September 2007, but decided to leave the program in April 2008 to pursue other opportunities.

Gabe worked in the lab from Janurary 2006 until he left for medical school in Virginia during July 2007. He investigated the molecular evolution of pigmentation genes in D. americana and D. novamexicana, and characterized pigmentation in isofemale lines of these species. Ultimately, he showed that variation in D. americana is consistent with local adaptation.

Marisa joined the lab after taking Dr. Wittkopp's course in Evolution and Development. She spent the summer of 2007 working on sequencing the ebony gene from D. novamexicana and D. americana, developing high-throughput protocols, and contributing to a variety of molecular cloning projects.

Saleh worked with us during the summer of 2007 as a visiting student from Northeastern Illinois University. He contributed greatly to fine-scale genetic mapping of interspecific pigmentation differences between Drosophila species. He also gave an excellent presentation on his work at the SROP symposium and at a the CIC SROP meeting at Purdue University.

Erin worked in the lab from July - Sept 2006. She has a diverse background in Evolutionary Biology, Economics, and Mathematics from Case Western Reserve University (B.S. 2006) and spent a summer at the National Institutes of Health, Division of Computational Bioscience. In September 2006, she bagan the biostatistics master's degree program at the University of Michigan and in 2008 continued on to the Ph.D. program.

After earning her B.S. in Biology from Cornell, Belinda became the founding member of the Wittkopp Lab (August 2005). She was instrumental in setting up the lab and getting all projects up and running. Her expertise, organization, and personality are sorely missed! In August 2006, Belinda moved to George Washington University to pursue her master's degree in Public Health.

Alekhya worked in the lab during her freshman year (2005-2006) as a participant in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). She analyzed the genetic basis of pigmentation differences between D. americana and D. novamexicana using interspecific crossses. Currently, Alekhya is focusing on her engineering studies, working toward her bachelor's degree.

Monica joined the lab in September 2005 as a history major with a renewed interest in biology. In December 2005, she left to study abroad in Paris, where she is continuing to do biological research. While in the lab, Monica helped characterize pigmentation in D. americana.